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tered by the first Chinese Revolution, spread throughout the Chinese nation. A number of Socialists were elected to the Parliament of the newly established Chinese Republic. Chang Chi, the president of the first Senate, was a Socialist, who had received his education in Paris and had there become an intimate friend of Jaurès. Ma Su, Sun Yat Sen's secretary, the editor of the most revolutionary newspaper, The China Republican, which appeared in the English language, is a Socialist. In an incredibly short time 50 Socialist newspapers had come into existence; Socialist free schools had sprung up; Socialist labor unions and women's auxiliaries grew and prospered, large quantities of Socialist literature were distributed, and Socialist theatrical propaganda companies toured the country. It is not surprising that the ruling class, and especially Yuan Shi Kai, the betrayer of the Revolution, who had used the bitter sacrifices of the Chinese people for his own personal aggrandizement and power, should tremble before the remarkable development of the Socialist movement. In August, 1913, he published the following edict, which shows how seriously disturbed he was:

Peking, August 8, 1913.

The Socialist Party of China is using the cloak of a political party in order to conceal its evil designs. These demagogues would coerce the government and flatter the people for their own evil ends. They are a danger to peace and law and order. They advocate violence and assassination. Therefore they have incurred the displeasure of not only the government but of the whole people as well. Many letters have been received from officers at Tien Tsin, Peking, and elsewhere, warning us against Socialist plots and conspiracies. Many foreign anarchists have joined them in order to disturb the international peace. The Socialist Party of China is not like the Socialists of other countries who merely study Socialism. If we do not put an end to their activities, a great outburst will follow. Therefore we have issued this decree calling upon the Provincial governments and generals to dissolve the Socialist Party of China wherever found, and arrest the leaders. Thus law and order can be preserved.

YUAN SHI KAI,

Provisional President of the Republic.

The Socialist organizations were dissolved; their property confiscated; their leaders thrown into prison and executed. Only the English headquarters in Shanghai escaped destruction.

The leader of the Socialist movement was Kiang Kang Hu, a professor of the Peking University, and one of those who published a number of radical newspapers. According to his own statement, he was influenced particularly by Bebel's Woman and Socialism. As a result he advocated schools for women, an innovation unheard of in the annals of China. His first Socialist speech, "Woman and the Socialist movement," delivered in June, 1911, in the Che Kiang was distributed widely as a leaflet and caused the first Socialist persecutions in China. It also led to the founding of the

first Socialist club in Shanghai, which was organized as a study club, where fifty men and women met to study the basic principles of the Socialist_philosophy. Meanwhile the first Revolution in the South of China, in Hankow, had begun. On November 3, 1911 Shanghai fell into the hands of the Revolutionists. The club now changed its name to the Socialist Party of China and immediately sent organizers into the Southern Provinces. The Socialist Star became a daily and gained a huge circulation. The membership of the Shi Hui Tong (Socialist Party), the first political party of China, increased rapidly.

On November 5, the first convention of the Party was held in Shanghai, where a platform was adopted which was a peculiar mixture of immediate demands and ultimate aims. As is to be expected, but few of the Chinese Socialists have a clear understanding of the Marxian philosophy, but they were firmly united in their one aim, the establishment of a Socialist Republic. In the preamble they demanded the common ownership of the land and the means of production while the "working platform” contained the following eight planks:

ment.

1. The establishment of a Republican form of govern

2. The wiping out of all racial differences.

3. The abolition of all the remaining forms of feudal slavery and the establishment of the principle of equality before the law.

4. The abolition of all hereditary estates.

5. A free and universal school system, on co-educational lines, with free textbooks and the feeding of the children.

6. The abolition of all titles and castes.

7. The levying of taxes principally on land and the abolition of all personal taxes.

8. The abolition of the army and navy.

The thirty Socialists who were elected to the first republican parliament introduced bills demanding equal, direct and secret suffrage, public schools, the abolition of personal taxes, inheritance tax, abolition of capital punishment, reduc-` tion of the standing army, abolition of girl-slavery. Not one of these bills was voted on because the forcible dissolution of Parliament by Yuan Shi Kai put an end to all proceedings. "The Party had by this time," says Kiang Kang Hu, "over four hundred branches in China, each with its official teachers and readers—for a great part of the membership could not read. Agitators and organizers, most of them working without pay, were sent out broadcast. The Party owned its own printing plant, and published three official

papers, the Daily Socialist Star, the Weekly Socialist Bulletin, and the Monthly Official Bulletin. Among the pamphlets and leaflets which were printed at this plant and sent out in great quantities, one of the most popular was 'The Communist Manifesto.' In addition, many branches printed their own local papers, and at one time there were over 50 of these in existence. Then, too, there were between 10 and 15 privately owned papers which supported the Socialist Party. The most important of the free public schools established by the Party was situated at Nanking. This school had an attendance of over eight hundred. Free public kindergartens were also established by the Party. A very curious part of the party organization was the Socialist Opera and Orchestra Company. In China actors and musicians are a very low caste. After the first Revolution many of these joined the Party, and the Party organized them into several theatrical companies, which toured the country, playing symbolical Socialist plays, and proving themselves an invaluable adjunct to the Party propaganda. The woman's organization had for its main work the furthering of the agitation for woman's suffrage. This organization had at one time close on one thousand members, and in addition many women belonged directly to the party itself. Schools for women were started by the Party, and had a large attendance."

Side by side with the Socialist movement, there had also grown up an anarchist movement, which became most troublesome to the party organization, since a large number of the anarchists had joined the Socialist ranks and endeavored to propagate their ideas among its numbers. At the second annual convention of the Party the conflict of ideas led to the founding of a "Pure Socialist Party" by the anarchistic element. The inevitable confusion of the Socialists with the Anarchists in the minds of the ignorant masses became a tremendous hindrance to the movement. Opposition against the Socialist Party had grown among the bourgeois democrats, who feared its influence even more than the increasing absolutism of Yuan Shi Kai. The Republicans realized too late that they were playing into the hands of a betrayer, who gradually crowded them out of every important position and who played his last card in the murder of the Young China Association. The second Revolution in July, 1913, came too late. It was drowned in blood. Parliament was dissolved and a new election ordered. The aforementioned edict against the Socialist Party had its effect. Hundreds of Socialists and Republicans were executed, and the Party as such completely destroyed. But in spite of all persecution, hundreds of intelligent Socialists carried on their secret agitation. They were a most important factor in the

mysterious illness and death of Yuan Shi Kai in June, 1916, and the overthrow of his openly imperialistic government, in favor of the honestly constitutional republican form of government established by the former Vice-President, Li Yuan Hung.

There are but few labor unions in China, and such as there are, were founded by the Socialist Party. In China, handicraft is still at its zenith, and the workers are partially organized in local guilds. The members of these guilds, with handclasp and pass-word, find ready access to guilds in other towns. A three-year apprentice system is still universally the custom. The journeyman receives a wage which varies between $3.00 and $10.00 per month, including full board. As the purchasing power of money is from five to ten times as high in China as in the United States, one may assume that the monthly wage of the skilled Chinese laborer is equal to from $20.00 to $30.00, including full board. Strikes -and political strikes also-are quite common in China. The Chinaman works seven days of the week. He knows no weekly day of rest. He does, however, celebrate three annual holidays, one in the summer, one in the autumn and at the New Year. The celebration of the latter holiday extends over from five to twenty days, according to the custom in the various trades. The number of real, industrial or factory, laborers is still very small, but it is growing rapidly from year to year. Ore and coal mines, steel and iron foundries, as well as tobacco, paper, textile and shoe factories offer the most striking examples of factory labor and are owned and controlled chiefly by foreign capitalists. The coal and ore miners work 12 hours daily for a monthly remuneration of $20.00. The miners must live in company huts and buy at company stores. They have a loosely organized union, which, after the first Revolution, joined the Socialist Party as a whole. It is noteworthy that the factory and machine workers were much more active in both Revolutions than the craftsmen, who, with comparatively few exceptions, remained neutral.

JAPAN.

Constitutional Empire; House of Peers: 324 representatives of Nobility, 45 representatives of highest taxpayers; House of Representatives: 379 members; restricted manhood suffrage.

Under Feudalism in Japan there were only four classes: Samurai (soldier), farmer, workman and merchant. Carpenters, plasterers, stone masons, blacksmiths, sawyers and miners all had strong guilds, the miners and sawyers retaining theirs till the present time. Just as under the feudal regime for more than three hundred years, the sawyers

regulate their wages and hours of labor. The miners' guild is a primitive type but very strong and quite communistic in its benefit and relief system. All the miners throughout the country belong to it. But the labor movement in the modern sense did not exist before the Chino-Japan war of 1894-95. The victory over China and the exaction of an indemnity gave a great impetus to the industries and a consequent increase of workers gave rise to labor troubles and strikes. Before this there had been Japanese who had studied the labor movements of Europe and America and who had tried to interest the workers of Japan in them, but they did not succeed, for it was a strange doctrine they preached, a doctrine of the Western world, and, besides, none of them was a worker himself. The real labor movement of Japan started in the summer of 1897. An organization was formed in Tokyo by various workingmen, principally printers and ironworkers. This was followed a few months later by the formation of an iron workers union in Tokyo, which soon had more than 1,000 members. The printers soon followed suit and formed their own union. In the winter of 1898 an engineers' and firemen's union, with more than 1,000 members, was organized on the Nippon R. R. Co. This was the first union formed as the result of a strike. Several thousand workers were involved in what was the first systematically conducted strike in Japan. The strikers obtained all their demands. This union has now a strike fund of over 10,000 yen, a membership of six thousand, 42 branches scattered all over Japan. It has paid out in the last four years more than 8,000 yen in death, sick and strike benefit. It published in Tokyo a bi-monthly organ, The Labor World. The Printers' Union also had its monthly paper. Thus from 1895 to 1899 Japan saw the beginnings of a very promising Labor movement. Sen Katayama, the well known Socialist, secretary of the Ironworkers' Union and editor of The Labor World travelled throughout Japan, speaking at all kinds of meetings. The government did not interfere with or attempt to suppress the Labor movement. But soon all this changed. In 1900 the Imperial Diet passed the so-called Police Law which at once became a powerful weapon to crush the movement. The police power of the state acted now under the authority of the Minister of the Interior and in a very short time killed one union after another until nothing was left of the promising labor movement. According to the law any agitation for higher wages and shorter hours is a crime, and the agitator is to be arrested forthwith. When trade-union propaganda became impossible, the leaders of the class-conscious workingmen changed their tactics; they started a political and socialistic agitation and created in that way

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